


and the stars look very different today

by Adarian



Category: Star Trek: Discovery
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, An Obol for Charon Spoilers, During S02E04, F/F, Happy Femmeslash February!, Here's some heartbreak, Since you know none of us know
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-12
Updated: 2019-02-12
Packaged: 2019-10-26 23:13:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,312
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17755322
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Adarian/pseuds/Adarian
Summary: During the ordeals of "An Obol for Charon", Tilly reflects back on her relationship with Michael over the past few months and upon a tender moment listening to Space Oddity together.





	and the stars look very different today

At Starfleet Academy, all cadets were forced to take electives, something Sylvia Tilly had no clue about until the sixth day of classes when her very kind academic advisor sent her a quick message reminding her that spots were now very limited. Tilly looked through pretty much everything but by the time she messaged her advisor back, only three classes had any seats left: Krav Maga (not a chance in hell), Introduction to Languages of East Africa (what she should have taken), or Masters of Pre-Contact Earth Music X: 1960-2060 (the obvious bird course). She signed up right away for the music appreciation class and the next day found herself surrounded by cadets who had taken the previous seven modules and knew quite a bit about music and were annoyed at the tone-deaf engineer who had showed up late with a triple espresso.

She sucked at it real hard. It was her worst grade her entire time at the Academy by far but it wasn't all bad. She had never listened to a lot of music growing up, her Mom always wanting a quiet house when she came off shift. Now she had a hundred years of wild, loud, and riotous music from a period in Earth history when pretty much every human on the planet was expecting to die from either nuclear war or climate change. And it was where she found Bowie and God did she love Bowie. She wrote every term paper she could on him, finishing the term with a 10,000 word essay on his final album _Blackstar_ , released within days of his death in what was considered one of the most awful years of the century. 

One of the things she loved about Michael Burham is that she had never heard David Bowie before. She hadn't heard a lot of stuff or seen a lot of things or done a lot of things. Tilly loved watching her experience new things. She had the most beautiful smile in the galaxy. It lit up the ship and if it was ever directed at you, you felt like you had been blessed by an angel. And luckily in the last few months, Tilly had gotten that smile a lot. It wasn't all because of her, it was just that Michael was so much happier lately and just so...human. There was nothing wrong with Vulcan Michael. She liked Vulcan Michael a lot. But she was happier so Tilly was happier. The Shore Leave they had spent together on Earth was maybe the best two weeks of Tilly's life and maybe Michael's too. The first few days were in Scotland as they apparently had shared ancestry there. Then Ireland, where the rest of the Tilly's family was from, and then onto the Black Forest and through there to Austria and the Alps. The last few days they had gone to Genoa and drank espresso and ate gelato and relaxed by the sea.

Since then, Tilly had daydreamed on and off about retiring in Italy... and sometimes they daydreamed about doing it with Michael. Retiring, that was. She had maybe a hundred photos of the two of them together and in each one Michael smiled pure joy and Tilly's heart skipped a beat each time she looked at one of them. Half of that was in memory of the strong coffee but the other was because of...well...look, Tilly wasn't good at this sort of stuff. She had gone through phases. After her MPCEM class, she had dated almost entirely musicians for a year, usually for a week at a time, before she got bored and moved on. Then she liked soldiers for a while and did basically the same thing. Nothing serious and nothing exciting or torrid. It wasn't like she was a prude or anything. She just liked to have fun and sex changed things. Sex made things serious. It didn't have to, not for everyone, but it did for her. And she made a strict rule of not fooling around with crewmates. She was a professional, at least as much as she could be. And she was a friend, a really good friend, and good friends don't put their own feelings above their friends.

What that meant was this: for the past three months since they had gotten back from Shore Leave, Tilly had been considering asking Michael out, but had known it wasn't a great idea in the first place so it needed to be a good time to give it a try. Which was difficult since there had been no good time. First, Michael didn't sleep for two days and then moved from her own Commander's quarters back into Tilly's room for comfort. So that wasn't ideal. Then Michael seemed to be getting if not over Ash at least not heartbroken anymore and Tilly was doing well in her training program. It seemed if not perfect at least better. Then her estranged baby brother was missing and she was a bit of an emotional wreck. Or as close to that as Michael got. So of course Tilly wasn't going to say anything. Michael needed her as a friend and she needed Michael as a friend. Dating would be nice. Well, it would be really nice, but their friendship came first, no matter what. Then Tilly started hallucinating and she thought it wasn't fair to start dating one girl when she was already seeing another.

So they probably wouldn't end up dating. Which was okay, really. What they had was great. They were the first person the other one went to and pretty much everyone on board knew that. If something happened to Michael, someone would run and grab Tilly and same thing whenever she had been hurt. Right then, slipping in and out of consciousness while the fungus tried to take her over, all she wanted was Michael to be there: whether as a friend or a girlfriend or a wife or a colleague or a roommate or whatever she didn't care. She wanted Michael.

Tilly thought she was hallucinating when she saw her through both panes of glass. She barely managed to whimper her name and if she had any control over her body, she would have tried to touch the glass to get closer to her. Michael was gone when she came to again but her mind stayed fixed on her until the drill came close enough to brush against her skin. She tried not to cry, she tried to stay in control, but she was falling apart.

Stamets encouraged her to sing her favourite song, trying to distract her. A memory of Michael came to her. They were halfway up a mountain in the Alps, Tilly exhausted and insisting they took a break. Tilly offered her an earbud from her music player and they lay on the grass listening to Bowie, saying nothing, not having to. Tilly looked over at Michael, her eyes closed as she listened.

Tilly began quietly, "Though I'm past one hundred thousand miles."

Stamets joined her, "I'm feeling very still. And I think my spaceship knows which way to go."

Tilly swallowed hard, flinching as the drill came closer.

And on that soft grass, Michael took her hand in hers and Tilly realized that this was the most important person in her entire world. She loved her. She really loved her. When Michael opened up her eyes and smiled at her, Tilly felt it too. It didn't matter if they ever said it. Michael loved her back, whatever that meant, she loved her too. So maybe...so maybe it was all going to be okay. No matter what happened next, it was going to be okay.

Stamets coaxed, "Tell my wife I love her very much."

Tilly held back her tears the best she could, whimpering, "She knows."

**Author's Note:**

> It feels like forever since I wrote fic although AO3 informs me it was like two months ago. So this episode broke my heart and I started sniffling three words in when I realized what she was singing. Happy Femmeslash February I guess? Let's start our prayer circle now.


End file.
